Why you SHOULD NOT read Miranda Rights to a foreign combatant.

This story completely blows me away! If you ever wondered why the White House didn't divulge information about the capture of the Christmas day "Under Pants Bomber" here is why.

Since the attempted bombing, several prominent lawmakers have argued he should have been placed immediately in military custody, and the nation's top intelligence official said he should have been questioned by a special group of terror investigators, rather than the FBI agents who responded to the scene.

The officials who spoke to The AP said on-scene investigators never discussed turning the suspect over to military authorities. And their accounts show that as the hours passed, the FBI turned to its own expert counterterror interrogators and made no effort to involve the special unit, because it was not yet up and running.

So we are not going to turn this military combatant over to the military... Hmm... Oh, and the FBI's "special unit" is not yet up and running. This is on par. It's obvious that terrorism is a back-seat issue with the Obama administration at the wheel.

The officials provided an account of the law enforcement response to the holiday bombing on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details of the investigation.

Here is what officials say happened:

Shortly after noon on Christmas, federal agents were notified that Northwest Airlines flight 253 had arrived at the Detroit airport from Amsterdam, with a passenger who had lit an explosive device on the aircraft.

After being restrained and stripped bare by fellow passengers and crew, Abdulmutallab was handed over to Customs and Border Protection officers and local police.
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The officers decided the suspect needed immediate medical attention, and an ambulance crew took him to the burn unit at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

Along the way, Abdulmutallab repeatedly made incriminating statements to the CBP officers guarding him. He told them he had acted alone on the plane and had been trying to take down the aircraft.

Abdulmutallab arrived at the hospital just before 2 p.m. Still under guard, Abdulmutallab told a doctor treating him that he had tried to trigger the explosive. The Nigerian said it didn't cause a blast, but instead began popping and ignited a fire on his groin and legs.

FBI agents from the Detroit bureau arrived at the hospital around 2:15 p.m., and were briefed by the Customs agents and officers as Abdulmutallab received medical treatment.

Shortly after 3:30 p.m., FBI agents began interviewing the suspect in his hospital room, joined by a CBP officer and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

The suspect spoke openly, said one official, talking in detail about what he'd done and the planning that went into the attack. Other counterterrorism officials speaking on condition of anonymity said it was during this questioning that he admitted he had been trained and instructed in the plot by Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

The interview lasted about 50 minutes. Before they began questioning Abdulmutallab, the FBI agents decided not to give him his Miranda warnings providing his right to remain silent.

Investigators are allowed to question a suspect without providing a Miranda warning if they are trying to end a threat to public safety.

Abdulmutallab's interview ended when the suspect was given medication and the investigators decided it would be better to let the effects of the drugs wear off before pressing him further. The suspect went into surgery — counterterrorism officials went into overdrive tightening airline security and chasing leads.

He would not be questioned again for more than five hours. By that point, officials said, FBI bosses in Washington had decided a new interrogation team was needed. They made that move in case the lack of a Miranda warning or the suspect's medical condition at the time of the earlier conversations posed legal problems later on for prosecutors.

There was no effort to call in the elite federal High-Value Interrogation Group, a special unit of terror specialists that the Obama administration said early last year it would create to deal with terror suspects captured abroad.

Last week, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said the unit should have been called in after Abdulmutallab's arrest. But even if federal officials wanted to expand its use to domestic cases, the special team was not ready for action, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress last week.

Based on the instructions from Washington, the second interview was conducted by different FBI agents and others with the local joint terrorism task force.

Such a move is not unusual in cases where investigators or prosecutors want to protect themselves from challenges to evidence or statements.

By bringing in a so-called "clean team" of investigators to talk to the suspect, federal officials aimed to ensure that Abdulmutallab's statements would still be admissible if the failure to give him his Miranda warning led a judge to rule out the use of his first admissions.

Even if Abdulmutallab's statements are ruled out as evidence, they still provided valuable intelligence for U.S. counterterrorism officials to pursue, officials said.

In the end, though, the "clean team" of interrogators did not prod more revelations from the suspect.

Having rested and received more extensive medical treatment, Abdulmutallab was told of his right to remain silent and right to have an attorney.

He remained silent.

This is insane!

There are a few things at play here. The "suspect" is NOT a suspect. They know he's the guy with the bomb, he was burned and still had bomb material on him. Yeah, just in case he is just crazy and wants to take the blame for the foiled plot, but is really innocent. The FBI should not have been a part of this at all, when you wage a war, a Jihad, against the United States, you are a military combatant; end of Story.

The United States Government is giving it's enemy an advantage by refusing to fight them on realistic terms.

To make things even better now we have Bin Laden claiming that he was behind the Christmas day bombing attempt.

CAIRO — Al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden issued a new audio message claiming responsibility for the Christmas day airline bombing attempt in Detroit and vowed further attacks.

In a short recording carried by the Al-Jazeera Arabic news channel, bin Laden addressed President Barack Obama saying the attack was a message like that of Sept. 11 and more attacks against the U.S. would be forthcoming.

"The message delivered to you through the plane of the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes of the Sept. 11," he said.

"America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine," he added. "God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue."

A quick read of the (publicly available 585 page) 9/11 Commission Report brings one very important revelation. Al Qaeda was at war with the United States, and the U.S. government (as a whole) was unaware of this.

The government has known that the U.S. is at war since the Bush administration so there can be no excuses. Treating military criminals as common criminals is a very ignorant and extremely dangerous move. There can be made no logical argument for these actions.

Even Eric Holder agrees.

In January and February 2009, President Barack Obama's nominees for Attorney General and Solicitor General, Eric Holder and Elena Kagan, both testified they agreed the U.S. government may detain combatants in accordance with the laws of war until the end of the war, (this sidesteps the issue of deciding whether the combatant is a lawful or unlawful combatant and the need to try them). When asked by Senator Lindsey Graham "If our intelligence agencies should capture someone in the Philippines that is suspected of financing Al Qaeda worldwide, would you consider that person part of the battlefield?" Both Holder and Kagan said that they would.

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